


Gran, Tell Us a Story About Grandpa!

by Erikthonius



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 07:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18846853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erikthonius/pseuds/Erikthonius
Summary: Hazel's memories about the man she loved





	Gran, Tell Us a Story About Grandpa!

Hazel sighed as the little ones swarmed around her. Each one was dear to her, and each one had something, some feature that always brought Frank to mind, whether it was Bethany who had Frank’s beautiful eyes, Jordie who had that round softness to him that she knew would turn into the muscle of a champion linebacker one day, or Chloe who kept turning into a baby elephant whenever she was given a bath. They all had that gift, but Chloe seemed to take a particular delight in it.

“All right children, what story would you like to hear?” She settled into the comfy chair, and they gathered at her feet, looking up at her eagerly.

“One where Grandpa was brave!” “One where Grandpa was clever!” “One where he turned into a dragon!”

Hazel smiled and told a familiar story, one where Frank, her brave, true Frank rescued a colony of merpeople from some marauding telkhines, defeating them because they expected a fire breathing dragon, but Frank had become a Chinese azure dragon. The children thrilled to his adventures. Hazel had become as adept at painting with words as she was with colors. At last she shooed them off, telling them that it was time for them to play outside for a while.

She loved her grandchildren dearly. They were a wonderful gift, especially to someone who was perhaps supposed to have died over a century ago. Still, she thought about the story she couldn’t tell them, not yet. The story where Frank was brave, where he was clever, where he’d turned into so many things, including a dragon. But it was the story of why these little children had never met their grandfather, why they only knew him from her stories and her paintings of him.

=====

Where Grandpa was brave

Hazel decided that it was a good time to pull up memories from the past. It had been a long time since old memories could overwhelm her, but after working with Lou Ellen Blackstone, Calypso, and some Somnus legacies, she acquired some mastery in summoning old memories in a sort of waking dream state. She thought about what Jordie had said, asking for a story of how brave his grandfather was. No doubt about it, Frank was brave, probably the bravest man she’d ever met, but it was a special bravery, not like, say, Percy, who everybody always regarded as the perfect model of a hero.

No, Frank’s bravery was a truer, stronger bravery. That was because Frank’s bravery came because he was scared of so many things. On that first quest, he’d been scared of his grandmother. Still, he’d faced the old woman and made her proud of him. He was afraid of fire; well, no wonder, since his very life was tied to a piece of dried old kindling. He’d faced that fear and even trusted her with that old stick.

He’d been afraid of Nico. Well, that wasn’t surprising. Her brother could be quite intimidating when he wanted to be. At first it was just teasing, that whole thing about him being the flower boy at their wedding and all. As it became more and more obvious that the wedding would actually take place, Nico’s teasing took a little bit of a darker tone. Hazel could sense a detailed memory taking shape, and she drew herself into it, wrapping it around her and letting it engulf her.

_Nico came into Frank’s praetor office looking very much like the son of Hades that he was. Hazel could sense her brother’s presence, so she wrapped herself in Shadow and Mist and followed him into the office, completely unseen. What was Nico up to?_

_“So, you mean to marry my sister, Zhang?” Any sense of teasing was gone, and the look in his eyes was so intense that he might as well have been wearing their father’s Helm of Darkness._

_Frank swallowed nervously even though he was over a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than the other boy. “I do,” he said, keeping the tremor out of his voice._

_“Be good to her. Take care of her. Don’t ever make her cry.”_

_“I will. You know I will. I’ll always take care of her. Nico, I promise, I’ll never make her cry, not as long as I live.”_

_Nico’s face softened at that. “I believe you. You’re a good man, Frank Zhang.” Then, surprisingly, Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, reached out and hugged Frank._

The memory brought a smile to Hazel’s face. The boys never knew that she’d been watching them, but it made her happy that the most important men in her life had done this. And after that day, she knew, Frank was never afraid of Nico again. Except when they were playing their silly Mythomagic game.

=====

Where Grandpa was clever.

If you’d ever asked him, Frank would never say he was the clever one. Certainly, Annabeth would be the first person he’d think of where cleverness was concerned. She certainly lived up to being a daughter of Athena. She was wise, she was smart, she was a brilliant strategist. Or he’d talk about Piper, how she was always the one to turn to when someone had a personal problem. In spite of how she’d suffered in her own life, Piper could always tell just what anyone else needed, and she never hesitated to help any of her friends (or even total strangers) get through their own crises.

He also deferred to Hazel herself so often, saying that she knew so much more than he did and that he’d be lost without her. The fact was, most people didn’t think of Frank as clever, really, except on the battlefield. He’d become a brilliant tactician, both in Camp Jupiter’s wargames and in actual campaigns. He’d led small sorties and large forces, and time after time, those who served under him would marvel at his brilliance.

Frank himself was never really pleased when his skills at warfare were praised. He always attributed it to his father, Mars, and he was always embarrassed to claim that connection. Hazel knew differently. She knew that his real brilliance in the battlefield came from a combination of a love for odd facts (he was the only one who ever held his own in the trivia contests that Annabeth and Nico would hold) and something far more important. For all the facts in his head about rare beasts of the Serengeti or the annual rainfall in Vladivostok, he knew far more about the men and women who served under him. He knew their birthdays, their siblings’ hobbies, their grandparents’ names.

This was not a stratagem for motivating them, this was simply that he felt a genuine friendship for all the people he’d worked with. She thought back to their time on the Argo II, when he’d ask Annabeth about her step-brothers or Coach Hedge about how he’d brought new demigods to Camp Half Blood. (He was, as mentioned earlier, kind of afraid to chat with Nico like that, and slow to warm to Leo, but in the years following Leo’s return from the dead, the two of them had become so close that some of the Romans started to speculate that there was some sort of kinky threeway between the two boys and her. Even now, she’d blush and have to fan herself when she remembered some of the rumors she’d heard.)

No, Frank didn’t think of himself as clever, but he had the wisdom to know how important human connections could be.

=====  
Where Grandpa turned into a dragon.

Frank could turn into any animal, mortal or mythical. He’d turned into bears and cats and bees and eagles. He only turned into a horse once. After he did that, he got an Iris message from Percy. What Percy had told him was that somehow Arion got wind of it and told Percy to pass on (“Minus all the cuss words, dude, you don’t want to know”) that if the silly Chinese Canadian baby man ever did that again or even thought of giving Hazel a ride on his back, Arion would come at him so fast he’d never see it and kick his equine ass straight into Tartarus. So he didn’t do horses.

He tried turning into a gryphon once, but it turned out that he had some sort of allergy to gryphon feathers. It was a good thing that his wife’s brother-in-law was the best healer in either Camp Half Blood or New Rome and gave him some cream for the rash that ensued. He liked turning into an elephant. He had always liked Hannibal, and that old war elephant had enjoyed Frank in either human or elephant form. He would also turn into a rabbit when he and Hazel were alone. Then he would hop into Hazel’s lap and she would pet him.

He never liked turning into a dragon, though. When he did, he’d change into a Chinese rather than a Roman dragon. This meant that he wasn’t as aggressive and couldn’t breathe fire, but the one time he tried the Roman form, he immediately changed back into himself and promptly passed out. He didn’t give the matter much thought; he just figured it was another strange allergy. He had plenty of other options, so he’d never need to change into a Roman dragon. Until…

Hazel steeled herself. She owed it to Frank to do this. She summoned the memory. This was not her own memory, but one that had been given to her by her niece, Bianca. A single tear slid down her cheek as the memory enfolded her.

_They got the call. The three questers were in danger and needed to be rescued. For some reason, Iris messages were blocked, but some oreads had revealed their location. Because of who they were, Frank immediately volunteered. How could he not? Normally their parents would come to their aid, but Nico was caught up in Underworld business, Annabeth and Calypso were engaged in sensitive negotiations with the Norse pantheon, and Percy and Leo were currently engaged preventing yet another ruptured oil tanker from fouling Kymopoleia’s palace. So off Frank flew off in golden eagle form, heading for the Donner Pass, where the three legacies were held captive._

_When he got there, he found the three of them locked in a cage. Even in his bird form, he was recognized._

_“Uncle Frank, is that you?”_

_He shifted to human, and saw with relief that, although locked in the cage, Sammy Valdez, Luke Jackson-Chase, and Bianca Solace-di Angelo seemed unharmed._

_Bianca was the most self-possessed of the three and spoke to him calmly but urgently. “Uncle Frank, you’ve got to get us out. The cyclopes that trapped us have gone to fetch special knives. They’re going to sacrifice us and use our blood to raise giants. They know who our families are so they’re going to use us to free Polybotes, Mimas, and Alcyoneus from Tartarus.”_

_Frank shuddered at the thought. There was no time to lose. He shifted to elephant form, meaning to batter down the door of the cage, but Sammy called out., “No, it’s a celestial bronze/imperial gold alloy. It blocks most magic. That’s why we couldn’t send an Iris message. Only the hottest dragon fire can melt the lock.”_

_He paused for only a moment and shifted into the dragon form he’d avoided for so long. He pushed the sense of foreboding aside and blew a stream of flame onto the lock that held the door. It glowed red, but then it turned back to a dull brown, unaffected._

_Sammy, inheriting his father’s sense of such things, called out “It has to be hotter. It has to be your ultimate flame.”_

_Even though the boy didn’t mean it that way, Frank understood the significance of the words. He knew that this day would come. He thought about his own children, Emily and Jason. He knew that they would understand. He hoped that Hazel would forgive him. He knew that she would, but that it would be hard. He shifted back to human so that he could speak briefly. He turned to Bianca and looked at her urgently._

_“Bianca, as soon as you’re out of the cage, call your papa and tell him to come get the three of you. Tell him it’s an emergency. Tell him...tell him, I’m sorry, but I think i have to break my promise.”_

_She returned the look, not quite understanding that last bit, but then her eyes grew wide. She knew what was about to happen; she had her father’s skill. He patted the pocket on his jacket, the one that held the special pouch that Sammy’s mother had woven for him so long ago. Then, before Bianca could voice her protest, he turned back into a dragon and blew fire, reaching deeper into himself than he ever had before._

_The lock turned to liquid and dripped to the floor, but as it did, Frank turned back into his human form and collapsed. The three prisoners burst from their cell. As Sammy and Bianca pulled out a spray bottle, a flashlight, and a drachma to send the message, Luke carefully turned Frank’s body over. He reached into the jacket pocket that he’d seen Frank pat and pulled out a pouch. In the pouch was nothing but ashes._


End file.
